The field of the invention relates generally to aircraft navigational systems and methods, and more specifically to systems and methods for emphasizing selected aviation or aeronautical chart data.
As an aircraft approaches its destination, much information is needed for the pilot to successfully navigate through an airspace surrounding an airport. The information needed by pilots operating under visual flight rules and instrument flight rules is different, and different versions of terminal charts are generally available for use by pilots operating under one set of rules or the other. In the United States, such charts are available, for example from NACO or Jeppesen.
Terminal charts for instrument flight rules contain a wealth of information stored in a compact form on a single image, whether provided on paper, electronically stored in computer readable form (e.g., a CD-ROM), or with an electronic display. The terminal charts may include a number of sections, some of which include a rather large amount of data arranged in tabular form, together with a map section for reference by a pilot. Such terminal charts are created for substantially universal use by pilots of different aircraft, and thus typically contain different sets of flight procedure data that correspond to different types or categories of aircraft, such as, for example, minimum altitude information for airplanes of different approach categories. As another example, the terminal charts include different sets of data for different airport runways for reference by the pilot. As such, the charts may include a substantial amount of data that contemplate various flight procedures and possibilities, a small portion of which will actually apply to a chosen flight procedure for execution by the pilot.
The large amount of information in the terminal charts tends to present difficulties for pilots to quickly find the applicable information actually needed for a particular approach. Sifting through rows and columns of data to locate the data needed can be cumbersome to say the least. Information contained in the flight chart, but not applicable to a specific flight procedure being executed, tends to clutter the chart and obscure the information relevant to the specific airplane being flown under a specific instrument approach.